Define your website's objective

Types of Websites

The first step in creating a successful website is to establish its primary objective. The primary objective guides your site’s most critical elements, such as technology, language, navigation, security requirements and layout. Other important elements — such as content and design — follow from this objective.

Websites can generally be divided into four types, each serving a different objective:

Commerce:

These websites are tasked with persuading customers to buy products or services directly through the site.

Lead Generation:

The goal of a lead generation site is to generate potential customers, or “leads.” Most lead generation sites ask visitors to submit their contact information in exchange for value-added information that is directly related to the vendor’s products or services. Examples include http://www.oracle.com/, http://www.salesforce.com/  and http://www.millerheiman.com/.

Content/Media:

Content sites are built on the advertising business model. They are updated regularly with valuable current information. Their goal is to keep visitors coming back for more news or information. Examples include http://www.datacenterjournal.com/, http://www.weather.com/, and http://www.foxnews.com/.

Support/Self-service:

This type of site provides visitors with quick answers to frequently asked questions regarding a product or service. This helps reduce the number of calls to a company’s customer service department and frees support staff to attend to more complex or pressing issues.

Recent improvements in web technology have brought about the addition of two new types of sites; Collaborative and Community sites:

• Collaborative Site:

This is a relatively new model that is rapidly growing with the advent of Web 2.0. Often referred to as a “wiki” — the Hawaiian word for “quick” — these sites are often used to develop content in a collaborative environment. An example of this type of site is http://www.wikipedia.com/.

Community Site (Social Network):

As with collaborative websites, social networking sites represent a more recent phenomenon on the web. These sites create a forum for people with similar interests to meet and even work on projects together. Like a wiki, social networking sites allow members to generate content with video, audio and text. Popular examples include http://www.myspace.com/, http://www.youtube.com/ and http://www.flickr.com/.

It must be mentioned that collaborative and community sites are no longer used for social reasons but are now being used by businesses to engage their audience in open conversation. These sites have helped boost search ranking and site relevance for websites that used this effectively.